#59 2018

Weekly Thing #59 / Jun 23, 2018

#59 • Jun 23, 2018

The Weekly Thing now has an image! 😲 I’ve wanted to give the newsletter a bit more character. Something casual, and personal. I have fun playing with block lettering. The kids’ birthday cards often have colorful block lettering in them, with a drop shadow. 💡 I decided to play with that for the Weekly Thing as well! Custom coffee cups may appearing soon. ☕️

Featured Links 🏅

Silicon Valley has become a ‘moral cesspool,’ says management expert Tom Peters - Recode

Fabulous podcast! 🎧 I first read Tom Peters “Re-imagine!” a long time ago and he has a new book, The Excellence Dividend, that he is making the rounds in support of. I really enjoyed this interview. Very candid, blunt and succinct.

Steve Blank The Innovation Stack: How to make innovation programs deliver more than coffee cups

Innovation needs a framework. Throwing hackathons at problems has a high likelihood of backfiring with frustration on adoption and outcomes.

As organizations have moved from – individual innovators working alone, to adopting innovation tools and activities, to teaching teams about evidence-based innovation – our most important realization has been this: Having skills/tools and activities are critical building blocks but by themselves are insufficient to build a program that delivers results that matter to leadership. It’s only when senior leaders see how an innovation process can deliver stuff that matters – at speed—that they take action to change the processes and procedures that get in the way.

This framework for thinking about innovation and it’s components is interesting.

My Weekly Photo 📷

Sailboats in Bayfield, WI.

Sailboats in Bayfield, WI. Jun 17, 2018 at 1:49 PM Bayfield, WI

Notable Links 📌

Digital Wellness for Grown Ups - Study Hacks - Cal Newport

I do think that platforms can help their users have a healthier relationship, but Cal’s point in this is also true.

But something about this growing digital wellness movement makes me uneasy, and I think I’ve finally put my finger on the source of my concern: it’s infantilizing.

We need both.

How corporations have helped Minnesota’s startup community grow | VentureBeat

Nice article from Chip Pearson describing how established companies in Minnesota have played a key role in the startup ecosystem. This feels a bit unique to our region.

WhenWorks Ends the Scheduling Back-and-Forth – MacStories

Good overview of new service, WhenWorks . In the past I’ve used Calendly to do this. WhenWorks has a great set of features and using an iOS app to bridge to your calendars instead of doing server-to-server integration on the backend is novel. Services like this are very useful for people with busy calendars. It still doesn’t solve the group scheduling problem which I still use Doodle for.

Introducing YNAB’s API | YNAB

Cool news from You Need a Budget!, they have a new YNAB API . We have been using YNAB for a few years now and it works great for our family. Their transition a couple of years ago to a service-offering is allowing them to grow into new stuff like this API. I’m hopeful that this soon appears in Zapier and IFTTT so I can build with it even more easily.

Shortage of skilled workers challenges Twin Cities tech firms - StarTribune.com

Snapshot of the exceedingly difficult talent environment for companies in the Twin Cities area.

The Twin Cities added 3,300 technology jobs last year, up 1.6 percent to 199,200. The area is one of the nation’s 15 largest tech-employment hubs, according to the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA). These jobs typically pay seasoned workers $75,000 to $100,000 or more a year.

Nice photo of Mynul Khan , CEO of Field Nation.

My Data Request: Request your personal data from 100+ companies.

Aggregates the methods for requesting your personal data from different companies.

Microsoft and Flipgrid unite to bring social learning to students around the world - The Official Microsoft Blog

Congrats to the Flipgrid team, a Minneapolis-based startup, on a successful exit and sale to Microsoft! They presented at Minnedemo in Sept 2014 . 👏

The Death of Supply Chain Management

This is why networks are replacing supply chains, and why a cloud-based network approach is needed for innovation.

How To Get Your Teammates To Follow Your Lead — WORK: A Guide

I often tell technologists to remember that everyone sells. If you want to affect change from the status quo, you need to sell it. This article describes one path for selling your ideas to your team.

Opinion | Hey Boss, You Don’t Want Your Employees to Meditate - The New York Times

Counter-point to recent trends of introducing mindfulness tactics into the workplace. The article doesn’t talk about stress reduction, which I find suspect. Given equally low stressed people, will mindfulness help or not? I’m not sure. Given a very stressed person, will mindfulness help them? I think yes.

Through-Wall Human Pose Estimation Using Radio Signals

This is geeky and neat, but it immediately made me wonder about a lot of nefarious uses for technology like this.

Data Ethics Framework - GOV.UK

We need more ethics discussion in technology, and this framework applied to data is an interesting example.

Data ethics is an emerging branch of applied ethics which describes the value judgements and approaches we make when generating, analysing and disseminating data. This includes a sound knowledge of data protection law and other relevant legislation, and the appropriate use of new technologies. It requires a holistic approach incorporating good practice in computing techniques, ethics and information assurance.

I’d love to see some companies share their approach for the same thing.

jp

Data visualization in your terminal? Sure!

Dead simple terminal plots from JSON (or CSV) data. Bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, histograms and heatmaps are supported.

I can see how this would be handy at times, particularly in scripts.

Survivorship Bias and Startup Hype

I first read about survivorship bias in Nassim Nicholas Taleb 's “Fooled by Randomness” (which is a great read!). When you look for it, you see survivorship bias everywhere.

Give Back 🎁

https://letsencrypt.org

Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority, run for the public’s benefit. All connections to web servers should be encrypted! The biggest challenge with encrypting the web historically has been the cost and hassle of getting an SSL certificate. Let’s Encrypt has changed that entirely by being a free certificate authority. Let’s Encrypt is possibly one of the most important things to happen on the web in recent years. Donate to Let’s Encrypt today!

Yet More Links 🍞

Microposts 🎈

Sunday @ 9:32 PM

Mazie got Nintendo Labo for the Switch, and has been busy building her piano kit for hours and is having a blast. Labo is such a unique game experience. 👍🏻

Sunday @ 8:58 PM

The kids got me The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for Father’s day, so we are exploring tonight. 🤗

Sunday @ 5:15 PM

Sailboat on Lake Superior.

Sunday @ 5:11 PM

Flag and wake on Lake Superior.

Sunday @ 3:11 PM

Our Apostle Islands Cruise is returning back to dock, halfway through, big storm coming. ⛈ Weather is not cooperating with us. 😳

Sunday @ 2:21 PM

Apostle Island Cruise this afternoon.

Sunday @ 11:54 AM

Stream in the woods.

Sunday @ 11:50 AM

Happy Fathers Day to all the Dad’s out there! I’m a lucky guy! 🙏🏻❤️

Saturday @ 10:27 PM

Lightning ⚡️ over the Big Top Chautauqua resulted in an immediate stop to tonight’s show. Was great while it lasted!

Saturday @ 9:48 PM

Magical here. 🎶✨ Thank you Brandi Carlile !

Saturday @ 9:05 PM

Brandi Carlile amazes me every time! 🎶👏🏻

Saturday @ 8:58 PM

Brandi Carlile taking the stage at Big Top Chautauqua . 🎶 Crowd is excited! 🙌🏻

Saturday @ 1:33 PM

Family selfie in Bayfield, WI. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Saturday @ 1:03 PM

Bayfield docks.

Saturday @ 1:03 PM

Lake Superior breakwater.

Saturday @ 1:01 PM

It is worth driving to Bayfield just to get the Wine Bread at the Candy Shoppe . So delicious. 🤤

Fortune 🥠

You’ve made it all the way to the end! 👏 Here is your fortune for this week.

Conscience makes cowards of us all.

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